


Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Season 1, Episode 14, T.A.H.I.T.I.

by TheSomewhatRamblingReviewer



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Analysis, Episode Review, Episode: s01e14 T.A.H.I.T.I., Meta, Nonfiction, Season/Series 01, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-29 05:18:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17197259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSomewhatRamblingReviewer/pseuds/TheSomewhatRamblingReviewer
Summary: Warning: Contains spoilers for the episode, later seasons, and potentially other MCU works. Complete.





	Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Season 1, Episode 14, T.A.H.I.T.I.

Warning: I stopped watching this show sometime during the second season. It’s not a show I particularly liked, but I was interested in the characters of Grant Ward and John Garrett and their relationship. Therefore, I plan to review the episodes containing Garrett.

Further notes: When I first watched the show there were times I honestly thought I was watching Eliza Dushku playing another Faith-esque character. Chloe Bennet has a strong resemblance to Dushku, and though, as far as I know, thankfully, her character isn’t a rapist, she does do and say many things I can easily imagine Faith doing and saying.

Therefore, I’ve dubbed Skye/Daisy as nu!Faith.

Open to nu!Faith beginning wheeled into a SHIELD medical facility by Coulson and Simmons. The doctors promise to do everything possible.

Coulson comforts Simmons, surgery is shown being started, and then, Fitzsimmons and Grant are sitting in the waiting area. Near them, Coulson is trying to get ahold of Fury on the phone, and May is quietly shifty near him.

Fitz is blaming himself, and they try to reassure him it’s not. Grant speaks truer words than they realise when he states (some of) the blame is his. However, May firmly insists the only one guilty is the one who shot nu!Faith, Ian Quinn.

Later, a woman in scrubs comes out, and she says they can’t do anything else but keep nu!Faith comfortable.

In response, May storms to the interrogation room containing Quinn. She beats the tar out of him until Coulson and Grant come in. “Outside. Now,” Coulson insists.

Outside the room, Coulson agrees Quinn deserves to die. However, her piloting the plane is more important right now. Since the medical facility can’t do anything more, they’re going to find a way to help nu!Faith themselves.

The next scene has the medical cube containing nu!Faith being inserted into the plane. Cool.

Grant tells Coulson HQ wants Quinn handled over, and Coulson declares Quinn stays in their custody until he’s ready to kill him/let him be transferred.

These aren’t his exact words, but it’s clear this is what he means.

Agreeing with this, Grant expresses some reservations about the doctors being able to help nu!Faith the same way they did Coulson, and Coulson says it’s time Grant knows the truth about Coulson resurrection.

The next scene has Coulson talking to a sceptical Fitzsimmons. He gives them his classified, illegal for them to read file, and they promise to try their best to help save nu!Faith the way he was.

In the cockpit, Grant talks to May. It’s clear he’s mourning for what happened to nu!Faith, but at the same time, with how unlikely this is to work, it might be better to face the reality of her dying rather going through all this.

May declares, if there was a one-in-million chance in saving any of them, Coulson’s going to take it.

Well, this is bitterly ironic considering what all Coulson does to Grant later in the series.

For anyone who doesn’t want to read a rant about Coulson and Grant but does want to finish the review, please, use ctrl+f and type in the word ‘anyway’.

Clark Gregg is a talented actor, and from everything I’ve seen and heard, he’s a good person, too. My feelings towards his character isn’t due to him or even the writers doing a bad job. Plainly, until this series, I’ve always been mostly ‘meh’ about Coulson. I didn’t have much of an opinion on him in the Iron Man movies, I was often on Jane’s side of being irritated by him in Thor, and come Avengers (2012), I could see why fandom embraced him so thoroughly, but I just didn’t feel it myself.

Before the reveal, I liked Grant, but I wasn’t that invested in his character. Whether he knew exactly what he was doing or not, Dalton did what he was supposed to: He made Grant a mostly generic, largely unobjectionable leading man with just enough quirks/charm/angst/moral greyness to keep him from being utterly dull, and then, after the reveal, he successfully made Grant an interesting, complex character that could believably pull off the deception he did.

If a person believes Grant’s irredeemable, outright hates the character, and/or believes he deserved everything he got, I can somewhat understand some of the arguments a person might make towards the first. As for the other two, I won’t go into anti-Ward spaces to sprout my views. If people want to tell me why they hate him without attacking me, cool. However, on the last, it’s best if people who hold such a view simply agree that them and I will always disagree and that them and I should never talk about that one particular subject with one another.

When it comes to me, the show truly showed how ugly it was with some of the things it did in regards to Grant.

I’m not saying he’s a good guy. I know he’s a villain. I’m not even making the argument any of Team Coulson should have ever forgiven him. My issue isn’t with the fact none of them did. However, there’s a huge chasm of difference between never forgiving and some of the things they did do.

In some ways, certain main characters are worse than he ever was.

And yes, this is an opinion. If anyone disagrees, I won’t go into their space to try to push this view on them. In my own review, however, I will state it as fact.

Anyway, someone from SHIELD radios in about how they’re disobeying a direct order and will soon be boarded.

Coulson is fussy about this, and Garrett appears.

I didn’t like Bill Paxton’s character in Twister, though, in what might be irony, that character had just as much homoeroticism with Cary Elwes’s character as Garrett does with Grant, but here, he does wonderful with the character of Garrett. He brings a delightful charisma and humour to the show.

John Garrett is a villain. I don’t believe there would have been any way to redeem him, and I don’t have a problem with what Coulson did to him. I’m not going to defend any of the bad things he does or make excuses for him.

However, much like Kate Argent from Teen Wolf, I love watching his character and am happy whenever he’s on-screen.

Coulson asks, “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Well, as opposed to the level-8 jackass I’m staring at, I still follow orders.”

“You’re the worst at following orders.”

“Maybe,” Garrett casually acknowledges. “But I like this one.”

And I love this exchange. Both Gregg and Paxton do awesome here.

A younger black man shows up, and he’s introduced as Antoine Triplett, nicknamed by other characters as Trip. After Grant went to Coulson, Trip replaced Grant as Garrett’s specialist.

“You wouldn’t know it to look at him, but Phil’s one of our finest.”

“An honour, sir,” Trip sincerely says.

Garrett orders Trip to secure Quinn, and once he’s gone, Coulson and Garrett go to the latter’s office.

It turns out, Garrett’s been chasing Quinn, too, and thanks to Coulson’s team, some of the work Garrett’s team had done was rendered null.

Coulson explains what happened with nu!Faith, and a silent agreement Coulson can do a vigilante execution if nu!Faith dies is made.

Elsewhere, Grant and Trip meet up, and they’re mostly professional right up until Trip decides he’ll find Quinn himself. Grant tries to physically stop him, they get into an all-out fight, and Grant gets the upper-hand right in time for their SOs to appear. Coulson orders him to stand down, and Garrett declares he and Trip will be hanging out on the plane until after nu!Faith receives help.

Then, the first signs of hoyay between Grant and Garrett are shown when Garret comments, “Well, I’m a bit of a sweet talker when I need to be.” He looks at Grant. “You wouldn’t believe what I could talk this son of gun into.”

I’m really not sure what Dalton was going for, but Grant’s face is hard to describe here. It’s like a combination of bashful, embarrassed, and maybe slightly preening? There’s some definite happiness in it, and though he might have some irritation, he’s not ashamed or angry.

“Good seeing you, son,” Garrett adds.

“You too, sir.”

They shake hands, and Trip’s look isn’t happy when he looks between them.

In the lab, Fitzsimmons are discussing what was done to Coulson. In the background, nu!Faith is on a screen. They get a call from someone, and Simmons is disbelieving over whatever they say.

Over to the interrogation room, Garret literally grabs Quinn’s tongue. He makes it clear Quinn has no rights, no lawyer, only nu!Faith’s weak heartbeat has stopped Team Coulson from chucking him out of the plane, and the only reason Garrett isn’t ripping the tongue out is, because, it’s the easiest way for Quinn to answer their questions.

In a darkly awesome moment, Coulson nonchalantly hands Garrett a handkerchief when Garrett lets go of the tongue.

Quinn, however, continues being snarky, and stopping Coulson from touching him, Garrett himself backhands him.

Then, Quinn reveals he shots nu!Faith due to the Clairvoyant telling him to.

In the lab, Fitzsimmons tells May they can’t find the doctor who operated on Coulson or any trace of existence of the secret facility he was in.

Back in the interrogation room, Garrett can’t believe someone like Quinn would fall for “psychic mumbo-jumbo”.

Coulson thinks Quinn is being blackmailed, and not confirming or denying this, Quinn says he learned the hard way obeying was in his best interest. He also reveals the Clairvoyant is still trying to get information on what was involved in Coulson’s resurrection.

Garrett’s ‘filled’ in about how Coulson didn’t have a near-death experience, he had a dead experience, and he doesn’t know what exactly was done to reverse this.

Later, May and Simmons talk to Coulson in his office. He insists they keep trying to find the missing secret lab and doctors, and when Simmons carefully brings up the fact Coulson literally begged to die during the procedure, he says he’s not suggesting nu!Faith be subjected to the same things he was, but if something else can be done to help her, it’s worth chasing.

Simmons leaves, and May makes it clear they should do anything humanly possible to save nu!Faith. However, they also need to acknowledge they might be playing into the Clairvoyant’s hands by doing so.

Meanwhile, Fitzsimmons are standing outside nu!Faith’s cube. She brings up the mystery drug Coulson was injected with, and Fitz gets an idea.

They do things with holograms, and these are cool special effects. Coulson’s shown watching nu!Faith via monitor, and they find a potential lead.

Next, the plane lands, and Fitz, Garrett, Coulson, and Grant leave with weapons.

The people inside won’t let them in without a certain keyphrase answer even when Coulson explains a dying person needs medical assistance. So, they start breaking in.

In response, the two men inside begin preparing to defend themselves/take down the intruders.

To be clear, I don’t have a problem with either side right now. The people inside did and are doing what they’re supposed to. I understand why they weren’t swayed, as well as why they’re preparing to take action, and I commend them for it. Meanwhile, Coulson and them are doing what they feel is necessary to try to save the life of their (minus Garrett and, at this point, Trip’s) loved one, and so far, this being fiction, they haven’t crossed any major moral lines in my book to do so.

During all this, the comms to the ship go out, and Garrett and Grant share a moment where Grant finishes one of Garrett’s sentences.

Eventually, one of the men is either killed or otherwise incapacitated.

Looking at the ID, Garrett says, “No hard feelings, Bob.”

Is this the Hydra Bob I’ve read so much about?

They find the other wounded one, and Coulson promises they’ll get him medical help just as soon as they have access to either doctors or the specific drug.

Yeah, nothing doing. This place is on a timer to blow, and the wounded man either dies or loses unconsciousness.

Ordering Garrett and Grant to find a way to stop the upcoming explosion, Coulson takes Fitz to search for the drug.

On the plane, Simmons and Trip share a nice moment when he shows sympathy and empathy for what she’s going through with nu!Faith dying.

However, I disagree with her statement she and nu!Faith have nothing in common. They’re both bubbly, talkative, fun-loving, inquisitive, highly intelligent women with specialised areas of expertise and a similar moral code.

Then, May appears. Telling them about the comms being out, she says, if the others aren’t back in an hour, she’s going in after them.

Except, first, nu!Faith is coding, and Simmons and Trip get to work.

Inside the base, Coulson finds an operating room, and there’s an effective, unsettling flashback of him being operated on. He begs, “Let me die!”

Gregg does great here.

As great as this scene is, I’m not sure Fitz creepily coming out of the shadows was what anyone was going for.

Regardless, Iain De Caestecker also does great here. He’s normal Fitz, whereas, Coulson’s face shows a man utterly haunted.

There’s a brief scene of Garrett and Grant working on the imminent problem.

Coulson enters a biohazard room despite Fitz’s reservations, and they find the drug just as Grant appears to say there’s no way to stop the explosion, so, they need to get out asap.

Fitz hurries out with it, but with an even more haunted expression, Coulson doesn’t turn to face Grant when he says he’ll be right behind him.

He goes into a room labelled T.A.H.I.T.I.

Grant and Garrett get Fitz with the drug out, and then, they realise Coulson still isn’t around.

I generally think the reveal was well-done, but I’m not sure how this fits.

Garrett’s like, alright, you get the geek with the drug to the girl, and I’ll drag your bloody SO to safety.

This fits with the characterisation he wants the other’s to view him through.

Grant simply says, “Agent Garrett,” but when Garrett insists, he complies.

This works if the above characterisation is in place and/or Grant doesn’t know about Garrett being the Clairvoyant.

However, aside from Coulson being a main character, this doesn’t make sense. If it’s Garrett’s planning to get more vials/try to kill Coulson, and then, haul butt out, fine, but if there’s an indication of him doing either, I completely missed it.

He has the drug. If it works, he can use his status to study nu!Faith. If Coulson is dead, all the better for him to manipulate everyone’s grief. If it doesn’t work, he could still likely swing disappearing her body for studying.

And the thing is, him getting out and Grant somehow saving Coulson could have been done without arising suspicion.

Have Grant say something along the lines of, ‘The team can’t take losing both superior officers in addition to possibly losing nu!Faith. Please, go, sir, and I’ll try my best to bring him back.’ Have him and Garrett share an ambiguous look. Have Grant threaten to knock him out and drag him, because, he’s, at least, coming back with one of them, and hey, you’re closer. Have Grant say, hey, you can help me get him, or you can go be the leader my team needs, but I’m not leaving without you.

Then, whatever the short exchange is, have Garrett looking regretful or simply thoughtful, maybe hesitating for a second, and then, leaving.

Moving on, Simmons and the trio have saved nu!Faith, but she’s even worse for wear, and Simmons questions if nu!Faith would even want them to do all this. May sharply insists they aren’t quitting now.

Scrambled comms come on, and I don’t like the fact nu!Faith is dying, but I admit I chuckled when Simmons excitedly said something about them being alive only for nu!Faith to start coding again.

In the base, Coulson’s walking around like a zombie, and when Garrett finds him, Coulson has a freakout about how nu!Faith shouldn’t receive the drug.

Fitz and Grant arrive to Simmons giving manual chest compressions.

I give Chloe Bennet props. I couldn’t play a coma victim, especially if it required props such as the oxygen tubing and other actors touching me. I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from reacting.

Grant gives the order for May to fly away, and this doesn’t work at all for the reveal. It’s made clear Grant would have died for Garrett. He was loyal to the end even when Garrett more-or-less abandoned him to his own devices.

Never mind, though, they made it in, and those two men, if they weren’t already, are definitely dead now.

Bursting into the cube, Coulson orders the drug not be given to nu!Faith.

Too late.

May joins everyone else in the crowded cube, and nu!Faith start improving, though, she has something akin to a convulsive seizure before fully stabilising.

Pulling Garrett aside, May asks if something happened to Coulson, and he truthfully answers that, one minute, Coulson was normal, and the next, it was like he’d seen a ghost.

Next, Garrett has Trip take Quinn to their plane for transport, and he and Coulson have a conversation. Gregg and Paxton have a good chemistry during this scene. He asks, if nu!Faith had died, would Coulson have really thrown Quinn off the plane, and Coulson’s only response is, “You were the one who made that threat.”

They shake hands, and Garrett says they might be seeing one another again sooner than Coulson thinks due to Trip having eyes for Simmons.

After Garrett’s plane leaves, and May talks to Coulson about him not wanting the drug used on nu!Faith.

He has a flashback of discovering the drug comes from a dissected being.

I don’t know if this being is an alien or a mutated human. I hope he or she or they weren’t killed for this, and given everything, I hope they were already dead instead of being killed while in the containment thing during the blast. I hope, if they were alive, there was no pain or awareness of what was happening and had happened.

Coulson says he just got really scared she’d suffer the way he did.

“But she didn’t.” He smiles. “For whatever reason, she didn’t.”

The next scene has him sitting next to the sleeping nu!Faith.

Interesting how Bennet had absolutely no dialogue this episode.

The last scene is of Lorelei arriving on Earth, and with no disrespect towards Elena Satine or her performance, I utterly despise the entire concept of Lorelei’s character. Out of all the episodes I’ve watched, Yes Men is one of two I refuse to watch again. It’s a horrible, despicable episode.

Fin.


End file.
